Fascist America came out of shadow

Monday night kicked off the Republican Convention in Cleveland. The theme of the evening was Make America Safe Again, and how will Donald Trump and his allies accomplish this. Well, according to our next clip, Americans live in fear. And here’s Rudy Giuliani.

RUDY GIULIANI: They fear for their children. They fear for themselves. They fear for our police officers who are being targeted with a target on their back. It’s time to make America safe again. It’s time to make America one again. One America. What happened, what happened to, what happened to there’s no black America, there’s no white America, there is just America? What happened to it? Where did it go? How has it flown away?

JAY: The symbol of, the spokesperson at the convention for American policing and how this safety will be regained, and how to regain the America Giuliani is talking about was Sheriff David Clarke, sheriff of Milwaukee County. Here’s what he had to say.

DAVID CLARKE: What we witnessed in Ferguson, in Baltimore, and Baton Rouge was a collapse of the social order. So many of the actions of the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter transcends peaceful protest and violates the code of conduct we rely on. I call it anarchy.

JAY: People live in fear. We’re on the edge of anarchy. Sounds like the language from the late 1940s and early 1950s during McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Then it was I was a communist for the FBI, that was on television. We were all living in fear every day the world was going to explode, and we needed the American military. Now the country is about to unravel and we need a strong police force and a stronger social order.

Now joining us to talk about the Republican Convention, the candidacy of Donald Trump, and whether or not this represents a form of neofascism in the United States is Henry Giroux. Henry joins us from Hamilton, Ontario, where he’s a professor of scholarship in the public interest at McMaster University, and his most recent book, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle, and his new book about to come out, America at War with Itself. He’s also a regular contributor at Truthout. Thanks very much for joining us, Henry.

HENRY GIROUX: It’s a pleasure, Paul, to be here.

JAY: So there’s a real debate going on amongst much of America. Certainly progressive, liberal America, about whether or not Trump and his candidacy, first of all, does it represent a form of neofascism? And then second of all, this issue of greater and lesser evil vis-a-vis Trump and Clinton. Let’s start with part one of this debate, which is is this a form of neofascism? Or is this kind of a maverick, big personality, right populist who actually kind of speaks in some ways to some of the economic concerns of the American working class?

GIROUX: I think it’s very difficult to simply see Trump as some sort of eccentric populist who sort of came out of nowhere, who was able to identify so many concerns that a number of Americans have about being left out of a system that basically celebrates everything that the financial elite finds rewarding.

I mean, I think the forces at work that have created Trump have been sort of building for a long time. And I think it is a form of neofascism I would call a new form of American authoritarianism. I mean, it mimics many of the things that we saw in the ’30s and ’40s, what we saw in Argentina, now the call to make America great again, the notion that shared fears are more important than shared responsibilities, the assumption that there are people both in the United States and abroad who represent some kind of common enemy, whether they’re Muslims, whether they’re the black lives movement, whether they’re protesters, whether they’re young people, whether they’re immigrants. I mean, this is a very decisive, dangerous language.

What does it mean to have a candidate who basically celebrates war crimes? What does it mean to have a candidate who refuses to speak to the fact that much of his following, an increasing number of his followers, are white nationalists and neonazis? It’s pretty hard to simply suggest that Trump is simply an eccentric populist. I mean, I don’t buy that, and I think we need to look deep into the history of this country, whether we’re talking about its beginning right up until Reagan in the 1980s to recognize the forces at work. I mean, this is a system that radiates violence, and he’s become the most outspoken apologist for it.

JAY: The language that we just played in the clips, especially I thought from the Sheriff David Clarke, this is word-for-word out of Hitlerite language, the fear of anarchy. We must reinforce the social order. He had a fairly well-viraled article with a CNN host where he actually denied that blacks are targeted more often than whites are, either in being stopped by police officers [in] cars, and so on. You know, driving while black, as it’s called.

The out-and-out kind of lies that can be told, the out-and-out denial of basic evidence of what’s going on, they’ve been able through the various media, Fox and otherwise, a significant section of the American people, and apparently maybe half of American voters–although I think it’s important to always remind everyone that leaves out about 40 percent of people who don’t vote–but a significant amount of American people are so willing to believe this is somehow in their interest. And this tills the soil for a much more overt and barbaric form of hypercapitalism.

GIROUX: I think you’re absolutely right. I think you’ve hit on something that in many ways the left has seemed to ignore, and that is the crisis of politics, the crisis of agency, the crisis of history, the crisis of ethics, it’s not being matched by a process of ideas. I mean, we don’t realize the degree to which education has become central to politics itself in ways that speak to cultural apparatuses that dominate the mainstream media and other sources that are constantly producing what I call a disimagination machine, one in which evidence doesn’t matter, reason is simply ignored, evidence, again, is thrown out the window. Civic literacy is viewed as a liability, that it’s more important, basically, to be stupid than to think.

I mean, you know, Hannah Arendt had said something interesting. I mean, among other things. She said that thoughtlessness is the [instance] of fascism. And I think the right understands this, and I think the right uses the media as a giant pedagogical machine to constantly constantly reproduce lies to appeal to the basest instincts of the American public to distort history, to erase all those public spheres where actually matters of thoughtfulness and political dialog and engagement can actually take place.

I mean, it’s part of the reasons we see the attack on schools. Schools are not being attacked because they’re failing. They’re being attacked because they’re public. Because they represent a public sphere that offers a threat to the very thing that you’re talking about: this massive right-wing disimagination machine, whether we’re talking about the media, or whether we’re talking about conservative institutes, or whether we’re talking about the corporatization of eduction, or whether we’re talking about the Koch brothers and all these foundations. These people are engaged in a massive attempt to erase history, to erase memory, to basically live in the instant, in the moment. And in fact, it convinced people that the truth really is nothing more than an opinion.

JAY: And I think there’s another piece to this which we’re starting to see more revealed during this convention, which is the ideological tilling the soil for this kind of more overt authoritarianism and neofascism, is one very important piece. But if you actually look at the political alliances Trump is making, you can see how he might execute on these things. It was only just a few weeks ago that Sheldon Adelson, the far-right Likud, far-right Zionist supporter, pledged about $25 million to the Trump campaign. We can see that’s one set of alliances.

But the fact that he picks Pence as his vice president–Pence couldn’t be more pro-Likud and pro-right-wing Zionist than Adelson. I mean, Pence is in the same political camp. Pence is also very connected to the Koch brothers, so he’s now maybe made peace with the Koch brothers, who didn’t know whether to trust him in the first place. Now the Republican establishment see Pence as sort of their man in the game, there. And Pence’s biggest message in the 60 Minutes interview, sorry we don’t have the clip right now, but essentially on international affairs his fundamental message was the source of all international chaos, disturbance, and so on is the weakening of American power. And the solution was to increase American power. That’s part of making America great again.

And part of that is echoing the, again, Netanyahu’s railing against the agreement, Obam’as agreement with Iran. And this was espoused at the convention by Rudy Giuliani, again. So let’s–here’s a clip from Giuliani about how he thinks world affairs should be dealt with.

GIULIANI: To defeat Islamic extremist terrorists, we must put them on defense. If they are at war against us, which they have declared, we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them. This includes undoing one of the worst deals America ever made: Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, that will eventually–that will eventually let them become a nuclear power, and is putting billions of dollars back into a country that’s the world’s largest supporter of terrorism. We are actually giving them the money to fund the terrorists who are killing us and our allies. We are giving them the money. Are we crazy?

JAY: The number of lies in that one short clip is somewhat astounding. Clearly, if there’s any one country that is funding terrorism that is coming to attack America it’s Saudi Arabia, not Iran. And it’s–anyone that knows anything about the region knows Iran is in fact kind of a balance against Saudi Arabia, and has actually allied with the United States, both in terms of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, fighting terrorist tactics and extreme Islamic, Al-Qaeda-type forces in Iraq, and so on. And that the agreement with Iran is probably the only real significant foreign policy accomplishment that was any good under the Obama administration. But the fact that that gets conflated with Iran is the one financing the terrorists that are coming to attack America is ridiculous when anyone knows it’s the Saudis and to some extent the Qataris, and maybe Kuwait.

As well, the fundamental issue of unconditional war. What does unconditional war mean? It means what? Massive troops? It means carpet bombing? It means nuclear weapons? I mean, that seems to be what the definition of what unconditional war would mean. Hyperaggressive foreign policy talk. And even though–go ahead, Henry.

GIROUX: I think that what’s interesting here, and what you touched upon ultimately, is that we now live in a society in which politics is an extension of war. And I think that what it speaks to is a form of militarization that not only characterizes an obscene foreign policy, one in which has resulted, as we all know, in 1.2 million deaths as a result of, since 9/11, as a result of the wars that are being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan. But I think the other side of this is that when war–when politics becomes an extension of war, then the war comes home. I mean, the same kind of militarization that dominates that sort of mindset, the notion that violence is basically the ultimate form of mediation and is used to address almost every problem on both the foreign and domestic front, you begin to see the countours of fascism, neofascism, more clearly.

I mean, think about what that means at home. You have the rise of a punishing state. You have increasingly a number of institutions that have been modeled after prisons. You have the criminalization of social behavior. You have a country steeped in lawlessness. You have cities being turned into war zones, particularly those occupied by minorities of class and color. You have a police force that seems to act with impunity. And then you hear this discourse. And this discourse is one that is not only incredibly distorted, but it’s one that basically is saying that hey, look, state and domestic and foreign terrorism are really the sine qua non of how we’re going to define ourselves.

And I don’t think that that discourse is simply aimed at, you know, the right-wing populace who support Trump. I think it’s also a way of saying that everybody else, watch out. You should be fearful, because we’re going to use every instrument of warfare, every militarized instrument, every war technology, every mode of surveillance that we can to make sure that you understand that dissent in this America and that America is basically unpatriotic. You’re right. It does echo the ’50s. It does echo the 1930s. But it also echoes something else. It echoes what went on in Argentina, in Chile, when people started disappearing. This is a politics of disappearance. This is a politics the endpoint of which are concentration camps. This is the endpoint here, internment centers. This is the death of democracy. This is not basically a struggle over populism, right wing or whatever. This is a struggle for whether you want to live in a democracy or not.

JAY: The big lies in Giuliani’s speech are at the same scale–never mind of Hitler–but of Cheney and Bush when they say Saddam Hussein supported Al-Qaeda. When later even they had to admit it wasn’t true to some extent, they had to admit. But it was clearly, there was no support for Al-Qaeda. This defense of not talking about Saudi Arabia, the targeting of Iran, this is clearly the agenda of a Sheldon Adelson. This is Likud. This is switch-and-bait to talk about terrorism and then target Iran, which means that’s the kind of foreign policy that we’re likely to see under the, under a Trump presidency, and this is what he’s surrounding himself with.

GIROUX: I think, though, [Chomsky] is entirely right on this. I mean, the foreign policy that we’re going to see under a Trump presidency is one in which there is an enormous potential not only for massive wars all over the planet, but also for a nuclear holocaust. I mean, there are two–the two major threats, it seems to me, that the world faces, one is the possibility of a nuclear war, and secondly, of course, the environmental crisis. And I think that when I think of how stupid Trump is, when I think of the people he surrounds himself with, when I think of the bellicosity and the lies that informs almost everything that he does, and I think of a media that doesn’t hold him accountable, except for the alternative media, like your show. I mean, then it’s not surprisingly that questions of war and questions of injustice, the United States is a breeding ground for injustice and domestic terrorism.

This all becomes normalized. You know, it seems to exist in a kind of void that neoliberals had created and which they tend to believe that economic activity has no social cost. You don’t have to talk about its accountability. When accountability dies, lawlessness emerges. And I think that’s what we have here. We have a party of utter lawlessness, in its most abject, unapologetic form.

JAY: And the media treats these, this election coverage, as they have to have a kind of sort of balance. They can’t go too hard after Republicans or they’ll be seen as being partisan to the Democrats. This is–part of what’s underneath this, I’ve been pointing out in some of my stuff, recently, they earn about $6 billion a year in election advertising, and perhaps more in a year like this. So they have a very deep economic interest in creating this supposed sense of balance in this coverage.

But both of us in our writings have been pointing out that all of this Trump phenomena, this rise of neofascism, which is more than a Trump phenomena, it’s all enabled by eight years of Obama. And then you can throw in Bush, and you can certainly throw in Clinton, and so on. And back, as you say, at the beginning of this hyper-capitalism under Reagan, it’s this massive shift in wealth from ordinary working people to the very top percentile. That is what’s created the conditions for this rise.

So this puts progressives and people that want to oppose this neofascism into sort of a rock and a–between a rock and a hard place, because it’s precisely the Clintonesque-type forces, which includes Barack Obama, by the way they manage the capitalist crisis so in the favor of Wall Street and such, even if they might throw the odd crumb here and there to ordinary people, that helps create the conditions for all of this.

So we’re going to do a part two of this interview, and in that we’re going to talk about the enablers of neofascism, and where that leaves everybody in terms of what they’re going to do next. So please join us for part two with Henry Giroux on the Real News Network.

Were continuing our discussion with Henry Giroux, who joins us again from Hamilton, Ontario. Hes a Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest of McMaster University, an author of his most recent book, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle, and a new book about to come out, America at War with Itself. Hes a regular contributor at Truthout as well. Thanks for joining us again Henry.

HENRY GIROUX: Its a pleasure to be here, Paul.

JAY: So in part one, we had a discussion about the rise of neofascism and whether or not Trump represents that, and whether thats whats on display at the Republican Convention. And we both came to the conclusion that it does and if you havent watched part one–if youre watching live now, this, youll come down our website. Youll see part one. I suggest you do watch part one because were going to kind of pick up where that left off.

In the first part we showed a clip from Rudy Giuliani and Sheriff David Clarke, calling for defense of the social order and everyones in fear. The worst kind of rhetoric weve heard since perhaps, well, I guess we heard it after 9/11, and we heard it during the McCarthy period. And of course what we need is a stronger police force and a stronger military. The big lies in Giuliani’s speech, especially about Saudi Arabia and Iran, and again I say, go watch part one.

So the ability of Trump and his allies to look in the camera and just outright lie–I quoted this thing in a piece I did recently which goes like this: “I reserve emotion for the many and reason for the few.” And thats a quote from Adolf Hitler, and thats clearly what were seeing on display in Cleveland. These guys know better.

Giuliani knows its not Iran funding this kind of terrorism. He knows its been the Saudis and Qataris, and maybe perhaps in some ways the Americans themselves. Certainly during the Afghan War, they did directly millions of dollars, perhaps billions went through Pakistan. to Afghanistan, which helped nurture Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and so on. And these guys know that history.

There was a small lie which everybodys talking about, and while it seems kind of minor, I think it actually has a little more meaning to it. And thats Trumps wife Melania. Heres a little clip from her speech Monday night.

MELANIA TRUMP: From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons.

JAY: So I think everyone knows about this all for now. The language she used is almost word for word what Michelle Obama used at the Democratic Party Convention about her husband Barack Obama and everyone, its so obvious its direct plagiarism. Yet the Trump campaign this morning, Tuesday morning, denies that its plagiarism was lifted. As I say, its word for word. Im sure everyone has seen the comparisons by now. I thought it was worth talking about, Henry, because its such an obvious lie, and yet theyll probably get away with just saying its not. And their base of voters will simply move on and say blame it on the liberal media again.

GIROUX: I mean, what I find interesting about that example is that just one of many, as youve said many times, in which lying has become so normalized for Trump and his cohorts, that the question of reality, the question of argument, the question of evidence, the question of thoughtfulness, the question of in some way trying to engage reason at its best, has become utterly superfluous. I think that what this seems to suggest is that you have an administration that will create its own history by basically creating its own facts because they dont care, and I think that what I find disturbing about that is that they dont care because they can get away with it. That the media doesnt hold them up in the way that it should. That people arent asking the hard questions.

I mean, what Trump buys into–and we all know this–is that celebrity culture confers authority and that you dont have to take people seriously who are a part of that culture because we assume that theyre not serious in the first place. Hes now relegated that or elevated that assumption into a kind of central dimension of politics. And I think its very dangerous. I think when you give up on the enlightenment and you sort of suggest any form of thinking is an act of stupidity, then what that suggests in the long run on questions of policy or on questions of governance around questions of how identities are being shaped, its that the truth doesnt matter. And basically what were going to do is were going to create a scenario where youll never hold us accountable because all the kind of things that make people comparable from evidence to serious arguments to important dialogue to matters of accountability now dont matter anymore. Truly thats the mark of a fascist regime.

JAY: And of course he can get away with this, and hes likely to get away with–and hes likely to get away with this, partly because hes going to say, well, even if thats true and maybe she did it, maybe a speechwriter did it, how does that compare with lying about these emails? And its very likely that the reason Hillary Clinton had this server is to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, which shows some intent at the very least to circumvent the law.

Maybe it wasnt outright illegal, but who knows. But much bigger lies in terms of the defense of what happened in Libya–I mean, Trump might even go there, I dont know. He certainly critiqued Clinton on Libya. Even though he himself, and this is where his own big lie is, at the time of the Libya intervention he called for American troops to invade Libya to overthrow Gaddafi.

So this supposed opposition of his to regime change in Libya is another big lie. But on the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama–but if we understand it correctly, Clinton was the sort of [impotence] here. They committed war crimes in Libya. Even if one accepts the UN resolution in defense of Benghazi, and a lot of people dont, but even if you do, the overthrow of Gaddafi was a war crime because it was not authorized by the UN.

It was supposed to be simply defense of Benghazi. Clintons been involved in targeting Assad and helping create the conditions for the terrorism in Syria, and so on. She supports the Iraq War; I mean go on. Then the even bigger arching, overarching issue–and this is what I wanted to talk a bit more about in this segment–is the massive transfer of wealth from most ordinary working people to this tiny fraction.

People say 1 percent. Its probably more like 10 percent. Even though most of it went to the 1 percent. This massive transfer of wealth, particularly during the time of the Obama administration, has helped create the conditions for all this. So the–how do you deal with this issue, Henry, of the enablers of this rise of neofascism? Because they–so many peoples lives have been ruined over the last decade and a half. And the phenomena itself of Trump?

GIROUX: I think that what youre suggesting, and what I believe is actually quite true, is that Trump and the Democrats really represent two different elements of the same coin. I mean, what you have is a savage form of neoliberalism that now dominates most of the globe, in which questions of power and questions of justice are completely removed from any sense of accountability. And you have a system that basically consolidates in the interest of basically a financial lead. What youre witnessing is kind of a class war with two different discourses. Two different modes of legitimacy.

One is very outright and very savage in its endorsement of the kind of [grudishness] and what wed call the bleeding group for violence and injustice. And the other sort of takes, I think, a softer side. It doesnt call for eliminating 12 million, 11 million Mexicans in the United States. But at the same time you have a president who has an assassination list. You have a candidate on your Democratic Party whos basically a war monger. I mean, both of these positions share, it seems to me, in a political economic system that basically is injustice, it is brutal. And I think what we need to do is be able to understand what they have in common.

When we talk about the lying as you just did, it is very interesting where politics become unaccountable, people lie and they think that can get away from it. We see this both in the Republican and Democratic Party. Both are now parties of extremists because theyre basically governed by the financial we. We no longer have a sovereign state. We have an economic state. And I think that when economics drives politics, at one level you get the most rabid representations of that, of course in the Republican party, and then near the hand you get representations that try to downplay what it does in the name of democracy.

Trump doesnt about democracy. Hes unapologetic about democracy. He doesnt need it. He doesnt want it. He doesnt think it works. On the other hand, you have the Democratic Party that hides what it does in the false language of democracy. But they both share something in common. They both share in a system that is as savage as it is brutal. That produces enormous inequities. That has ruined the social state and has basically celebrated and expanded the punishing state. I dont just talk about militarization. To me Im more concerned about a society that it increasing criminalizes and militarizes all aspects of foreign and domestic policy and they both share in that.

JAY: They both share in being forms, political representation and alliances of sections of the elites, of the billionaires. They both–their, really, underlying economic policies not different. And most represent hyper-capitalism. They both represent defense of this sort of parasitical Wall Street. There is some difference, I believe, and they debate in the elite just how intense can the exploitation of American workers get?

I think that the Democrats have represented here represented over the last decades, even including Roosevelt in this about he represented a kind of more rational sector of the elites. But theres a fight over how intense you can get and the–Reagan, I think, represents the coming to consciousness of a section of the elites that the working class is actually quite weak now. The Soviet Union is no longer a model anyone believes in. Its starting to fall apart.

Globalization is taking off. Youre going to be able to play workers around the world against each other. You can up the ante on actually now targeting especially the upper echelons of the American working class so you dont have to pay auto workers $26 to start. Now you can pay them $14 an hour, which is what came out of the Obama saving of the auto industry.

But there is still a difference here, and I think its an important one. The constituency of the far right, of the Trump Republican Party, and as we talk about in the first segment its a constituency of the American public willing to accept a level of kind of overt fascism. A rhetoric that would support rounding up Black Lives Matter and putting them all in jail and charging them with conspiracy for terrorism.

Thats certainly the language were hearing already. And from Sheriff David Clarke that speaks and others that directly try to connect the language of Black Lives Matter with the assassination of cops. Even though theres not a shred of evidence of any of that, quite the contrary. Black Lives Matter made it clear that they have nothing to do and dont support anything like that. You know we know that it wasnt that long ago that the amendment to the NDAA, the act that authorizes the financing of the military, where theres an amendment where the army itself could round people up and put them in detention camps.

In fact, again heres the enablers of this sort of thing. Barack Obama signs off on that to even include US citizens. But this you can see this regime–if its a Trump regime surrounded by a David Clarke and Rudy Giuliani. I mean, these are the guys that would use that legislation to round people up. What Im getting at is there is more danger here, and this language of greater evil and lesser evil, I think its a mistake to even frame it that way. Its not a moral question and evils a moral category.

This is a strategic tactical question for people that are organizing to defend whatever democracy is left, and to try to move society forward to something new. That if these guys are in power there is going to be far less room to move. Because these are the guys that will make dissent illegal. The Clinton type forces, Obama type forces, they depend on a black folk. They depend on a Hispanic vote, they depend on educated voters, they depend on urban workers who dont fall for this kind of stuff. So as long as theres still electoral politics for the foreseeable future, there is. We dont know how long that last. I actually think strategically it is better to have a Clintonesque presidency–I mean a Clinton, not -esque, a Clinton presidency. But be truthful with everybody what this all means.

GIROUX: I completely agree with you. I think that Trump is a real immediate danger to the planet and to human existence. And I think any vote for him is far more dangerous than, lets say, a vote for Clinton. There were two things you could have recognized here. At one level, youve got a system where power is now separated from politics. The social contract is basically all but dead. Certainly on the extreme right. Meaning that power is global and politics is local. The people who now control the states, who control the nation states are basically global international organizations.

Were talking about the IMF, the World Trade Organization. I think that in Clinton at least strategically there was an attempt to sort of waive the idea that Clinton give lip service to against the reality of the politics that she produces. Thats an opening. I think that in short term and long term strategies. I think youve pointed to this. One level on the short term, I think we have to put somebody in power at the moment that is not going to destroy the planet and end up putting everybody in a concentration camp or in a prison.

I mean thats a real danger. To think that what he can do to the Supreme Court and to claim that Clinton is just as bad as she is because shes a warmonger, I think is nonsense. I mean as bad as she is, shes not Trump. Shes not the extreme right. But is she acceptable as a [carry on] for what it might mean to expand the possibilities of democracy? Absolutely not.

I think in the long run what we have to do is we have to organize people to basically participate in the short term in strategic kinds of elections. For instance, where school boards will not be turned over to the right. Or make sure that social provisions are being put into place that benefit the working class. But do everything we can do defend public schools. Do everything that we can do defend public goods.

But in the long run we need a third party. More when system is utterly corrupt. Its going to be changed. But that doesnt mean we simply drop out of the system entirely and turn it over to the lunatics and the warmongers. I think thats completely [inaud.]. I dont buy that left argument. I think that the left doesnt sense the most immediate danger that we face with these fascists who are about to unfortunately potentially come to power.

JAY: Yeah, and I dont think in doing that you need to create illusions about Clinton.

GIROUX: We dont need to apologize for Clinton to recognize were in a state of crisis so severe that its unlike anything were facing in probably the history of this nation since the Civil War.

JAY: The critical thing we have to keep saying, its not about Hillary Clinton and its not about the Democratic Party. Its about hyper-capitalism. Its about how hyper-capitalism has become so parasitical that finance and the preponderance of the elites, they make more money out of this gambling casino capitalism, not very interested in what actually goes on in the economy. Theyve become so short sighted theyre such con men and snake oil salesmen as I was saying, that Trump is really a legitimate face of them. Whether even though they–I would say the majority of them trust Clinton to manage capitalism more than they trust Trump to do it–a couple of things I think are for sure.

One is either one of two things is going to happen over the long run, because we know theres going to be another economic meltdown. Theres going to be another situation where theres going to be a tremendous impetus to go to war. And we know about the coming climate disaster. And one of only two things are going to happen, which is the Democratic Party as representative of parasitical hyper-capitalism is either going to create the conditions for another Trump, or Trump himself, to come to power.

Or two, the Democratic party will give rise to their own Trump, and theyll morph into this type of [huge] right populism and win over enough sections of society so that they can play that card. So in the longer run we better get organized independent of these elite parties and tell people all of this. But in the shorter run to say theres no difference between a Trump and Clinton to ordinary people in terms of their ability to get organized, its an illusion. I mean just go think about organizing under the dictators we know about from Latin America to–you dont even have to go to the extremes of Hitler. You can find much more modern examples.

GIROUX: Paul, you and I under Trump will be put in jail.

JAY: No doubt.

GIROUX: I think under Clinton well be ignored. But it seems to me that theres also another issue. Theres also the possibility that the Democratic Party basically will recognize in some ways that the demographics and the mobilizations that are taking place all over the country have to somehow be addressed. And that might make it a party thats a little more–actually less parasitic than weve assumed that weve–and predatory that it might become. I dont know.

I dont know if theyll embrace that New Deal sort of logic. But the Democratic Party, unlike the Republican Party of extremists, has to find ways to legitimate itself. That means that it has to somehow create ideologies that give the impression that its truly about furthering democracy rather than destroying it.

On the other hand, Trump doesnt care about ideology. He doesnt need an ideological justification for what he does, in ways that suggests he has something to do with democracy itself. Hes just simply saying hey, look, the countrys in crisis. Im going to mobilize fear, Im going to get rid of people who dissent, and Im going to be a warmonger. And Ill do everything that I can to make sure that financial class is happy. because basically theyre going to fund my campaign. And I think that as you say, the third way is to basically begin to mobilize people in ways that recognize that the real enemy here is not the Republican or Democratic Party.

The real enemy here is finance capital. The real enemy here is a savage form of neoliberalism that has–that breeds nothing but misery, intolerance, inequality, and massive degrees of human suffering. I mean, look, 70 thousand people die a year because of poverty. I mean, you have young people that have been completely written out of the script of democracy, burdened with debts. Sort of told that all the problems that they face, theyre responsible for. Weve lost the ability to translate private issues into public concerns and we need to mobilize in ways in which matters of education become central to politics itself.

We need to convince people. The left needs to convince people that the problems that theyre talking about are problems that people can identify and recognize themselves in. Thats going to take a long time. Thats not going to happen tomorrow.

JAY: And whats your take on what many people are turning to, the Green Party and Jill Steins candidacy?

GIROUX: I think the Green Party is one possibility. I think that we need a broader social movement. We need a movement that basically brings all factions of the left together. Those are the concerns of our economic domination. Those are the concerns about the theological domination. Those are the concerns about the environment. We need as you said, a broad-based social movement. And I think the Green Partys fabulous and important. I dont think its reaches lie enough. I dont think that the banner under which it operates speaks to what I would call the emergence of the necessity for discourse for radical democracy.

JAY: Okay. Well, well talk about that more another time, and perhaps well get somebody from the Green Party on to discuss it. Thanks very much for joining us, Henry.

Nullius in verba

End Aadhaar Raj.

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